News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 24:
National Review Online: Clifford D. May, president of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, lashes out at the UN for considering Palestinian requests for a condemnation of Israeli settlement construction. “[W]hy should Palestinians negotiate if they can get the U.N. to force [...]
It’s hard to know for sure, but he certainly doesn’t keep pleasant company.
Ori Nir, at Americans for Peace Now, has a good analysis of Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, who is apparently Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s new national security adviser. Replacing another ultra-hawk, Uzi Arad, Amidror seems to be a big-time hawk on [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 23:
The Wall Street Journal: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Emanuele Ottolenghi opines, “Arabs’ revolutionary awakening belies Western conventional wisdom in the Middle East,” and repeats a linkage-denying argument that “ordinary Arabs who rose against their regimes didn’t do so because they wanted [...]
Due to recent protests in Iran, authorities are reportedly jamming the BBC Persian satellite broadcast. Iran’s leaders regard the channel as a propaganda outlet for the Brits’ nefarious aim of regime change.
But if the Iranians were paying attention, they would see that BBC Persian has an excellent report on another piece of [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 11:
The Weekly Standard: Stephen Schwartz writes on “Iran’s Conspiracy Industry” and observes that “conspiracy theories have long flourished in the lands of Islam.” Schwartz offers a rundown of recent anti-Semitic television programming in Iran, warning, “all of this might seem like nothing more than typical, [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 5-7:
The Weekly Standard: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Benjamin Weinthal blogs that U.S. senators “have reached a breaking point” with Germany’s “recalcitrant position about shutting down Iran’s main financial conduit in Europe—the Hambug-based European-Iranian Trade Bank (EIH).” Weinthal cites a letter signed by [...]
Cliff May appeared in a five-minute interview on Fox News promoting the fear-mongering settler propaganda movie “Iranium,” a production of the Clarion Fund in which May appears.
May, the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which has five other experts who appear in the film, called Iran “radical.” But [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 4:
The Washington Post: Foundation for Defense of Democracies board member and Project for the New American Century letter signatory Charles Krauthammer opines on the unrest in Egypt and takes a swing at the possibility of Mohamed ElBaradei leading an interim government. “ElBaradei [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for January 28:
The Atlantic: Jeffrey Goldberg lists his observations on the ongoing events in Egypt and mentions that friends of his, like FDD fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht, advocate that democratically elected Islamist governments might be part of a “long-term process of gradual modernization.” But [...]
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Neoconservative Pundits: Arabs are obsessed with Israel; Arabs don't care about Israel
Iran hawks and neoconservatives have had a tendency to pick one of two arguments on the issue of whether Israel plays a central role in Middle East politics.
The first argument states that Israel is a central character in Arab nationalism and that irrational hatred of Israel and Jews has a prominent place in any [...]